The Price of Power and the Silence of Cricket: What Pakistan's Tariff Hearing Tells the Ground

There was something in that afternoon at Nepra's Karachi office that carried me back thirty years to a press box where I was the only woman, where the smell of ink and aftershave hung in the same air. This room was small too, filled with papers, and the people before the microphone were arguing over a number that lands directly on every household's electricity bill. The Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA-G) presented six scenarios for CY2027 — a base-case average Power Purchase Price of Rs27.309 per kWh, an optimistic Rs25.883, and a worst case stretching to Rs29.255. The silence in the room was the silence of a dressing room before a match — nobody knows what the pitch will do, but everyone knows the result is already loaded.

This is not a cricket story, and I say so plainly because the cardinal sin of this profession is forcing every big story into your own beat. On the day the stadium lights come on, someone else has already paid the bill. Pakistan's power sector is in the middle of an argument that shapes the scaffolding of sport — academy generators, club floodlights, broadcast trucks, and the viewers at home who check the bill before they check the score. CPPA-G's base case puts total power purchase cost at Rs3.552 trillion, of which Rs1.319 trillion is fuel cost and Rs1.914 trillion is capacity charges. That capacity charge is the character that decides the whole game — because it stands there even when fuel gets cheaper.

My first observation is that this debate is not really about tariffs but about the honesty of assumptions. Nepra sought clarification on RLNG supply, exchange rates, Brent prices and demand figures — the very act of asking signals a healthy process. CPPA-G itself conceded uncertainty in fuel availability, the dollar rate and future fuel-charge adjustments (FCA). That uncertainty is why Nepra ordered KIBOR revised from 11.70 percent to 12 percent, which tells you this document is a draft for argument, not a final tariff. Industrial representatives demanded the incremental package be suspended immediately and FCAs applied prospectively, arguing it benefits a limited set of industries while more than 90 percent of consumers carry the burden. That is not just economics; it is the politics of cross-subsidy that no scorecard ever prints.

Here is something years of watching matches taught me: when projections start looking too clean, something is hidden. CPPA-G assumed 2.6 percent demand growth — 130,081 GWh in sales — but Nepra noted that CPPA-G, ISMO and the distribution companies submitted differing demand estimates. In the demand-sensitivity scenario, growth falls to 0.70 percent. That is the difference between reading the first ten overs as the whole match. If higher prices suppress industrial and household consumption, fixed capacity charges get spread across fewer units — meaning the per-unit cost can climb further. It is the reverse cycle headlines never catch.

Now the point least spoken and most painful to me. The sporting world — cricket especially — is almost absent from these debates, even though it stands to be hit hardest. Pakistan's domestic cricket structure already sits on a fragile base: stadium upkeep, academy operations, district-ground floodlights. When their electricity bills rise, the first cuts fall on what nobody watches. It is the same story I have written about India's Ranji week: when the franchise economy arrives, the first ground to empty is the one without a camera. In Pakistan too, the price of power will bite first at the level where no sponsor exists. This Nepra hearing matters because it is not merely setting a consumer bill — it is shaping whether the game remains reachable for the ordinary person over the next few years.

But I must also say that reducing this whole debate to a 'electricity is getting dearer' headline is a grave injustice. CPPA-G's worst case rests on Rs290 to the dollar and higher fuel prices — meaning the number depends on external markets, not a single decision. And even in the best case, capacity charges remain at Rs1.914 trillion. Cheaper fuel does not lighten a burden fixed in contracts. Until IPP agreements and capacity payments are reviewed, the tariff discussion is half a story.

I remember the day in 2026 when I filed four hundred words on a sixteen-year-old's Ranji debut and the desk cut it to 120. I learned that the number that gets printed is never the whole story. Leaving Nepra's room today, Rs27.309 per kWh feels like that number — ready to print, still incomplete. The real question is not how much the tariff rises, but whether we are prepared to count the price we will pay on the ground where the next generation learns to play.